Rapture change

I just want to discuss one possible shape of Rapture change.

I actually hate the idea of current PTR version of “no short time spirit buffs count into rapture” + change of mana return to 250% SPI.

1) 250% SPI seems like "hey, well nerf in next tier too" when scaling with gear gets out of hand again
2) Fun Factor – tracking procs and timing raptures getting mana bonus – that is great IMO, rewards skillful play. (out of bounds with mana tide, agreed)
3) itemization – like shammy we would value short term spirit very low, since our main mana ability ignores it. I raid 10mans with resto shammy, so this is a bit selfish.

How to solve current "Rapture broken" issue? Why not change Rapture to return 100% mana spent on PW:S + lets say 40% of SPI in mana.

A) It would mean scaling with spirit better managable in next tiers.
B) It would preserve players choice between active management > passive approach. Passive player has possiblity to stack static SPIRIT and have good enough results, active may manage his short term buffs to better results (but not insanely better). Variety of choices make the game interesting, doesn´t it?
C) It would not be too broken in PvP or PvE.
D) Not terribly complicated tooltip, quite elegant, no exceptions in exceptions ...

Guys, do you see any catches here? Why this obvious solution is not used? (It is not even my idea, read it somewhere and have been wondering why it is not like this since.)

I actually kind of like it. I think the problem with the current rapture is that it scales too good with gear, making it poor in lower levels of gear and very powerful in high levels. Nerfing it to a smaller % would hit lower geared ppl hard, while balancing it to be good enough for those is making the high level gear too powerful compared to other healers that basically dont have scaling regen outside manatide/meditation (which disc has too).

Giving it a free PWS on a cd is an elegant solution to meet the intended reason of rapture (which has been stated that its because disc has to spend mana on PWS), and give a slow moving buff with gear. It would work like a normalizing.

I always liked the idea of getting a rapture proc with former mana/currently spirit procs and I considered it one of those bits of "skill" for disc. I agree the procs with mana tide had to go.

I love rapture, but let's face it, in it's current form, it has too many problems. It needs to be either removed completely, or drastically redesigned.

From a quality of life perspective, it forces good priests to make sure it procs on CD and with multiple disc priests you're forced to talent DI, or you'll end up fighting for procs. DI is OK, but having to talent a quality of life improvement is stupid, and being forced into a talent completely goes against the intent of the new talent system.

It's also impossible to balance. They can't balance it around being used on CD, because it would be too penalizing if you missed a proc; but if they don't balance it around it being used on CD, it becomes extremely OP when it's kept on CD.

I have to be honest, I was one of the people who championed to bring it back when they removed it from beta; but I was hoping they would at least fix it's fundamental flaws. At this point I would rather them take it out then have them band-aid fix with it every patch.

I don't think the 250% spirit thing will be a problem. Allowing short duration spirit buffs to buff rapture has universally been considered a notable problem because its... really powerful. The changes seem fair to me, we'll see. IMO, the bigger concern is getting holy to feel closer to disc in terms of mana longevity.

I never quite understood why Disc needs or more importantly deserves an extra mana regen mechanic like Rapture. As holy I would love my flash heal spell to give me back 250% of my spirit every 12+ seconds.

What? Everyone has meditation at 50%. But yes, discounting PWS, you could argue that priests expend mana similarly to each other (okay, disc uses Penance, holy CoH and more Renew..) discounting PWS.

Which is why, instead of deleting Rapture altogether or making it merely free PWS every 12 secs, I would suggest giving holy brethren some extra mana. Holy concentration in the form it was in TBC? Or criticals giving some extra spirit boost, like WotLK concentration. If you take away Rapture, you find that disc is at the bottom of the barrel with even worse mana than what holy has. Definately not good for us.

I find the rapture change good, but it might proof to still be op, though not nearly as badly as current design. Holy just needs to be brought up in their mana. That would make them decently equal. Disc still having edge with Shell in some fights (we'll see if encounter design continues to favor it), but then again, holy does have way more burst healing capabilities.

Holy Priests can also cast PWS, just on a 6 sec cooldown. So not sure why they don't get Rapture as well or why Disc needs that mana back so desperately but Holy doesn't need that mana back? If a Disc Priest is casting PWS every 12-15 seconds to regen mana why can't a Holy Priest as well. Whether it is smart or not for a Holy Priest to cast PWS isn't the point, it's there in the toolbox and tools were meant to be used. Not that I mind having Rapture as Disc, I just resent the lack of something similar for Holy. We used to have better combat regen as our unique Holy regen mechanic (yawn). But Disc got the same mana regen AND Rapture. Hmm.

I think that they should revert the proposed changes and make it still benefit from temporary spirit buffs, with the exception of MTT, which seems to be the main issue of contention here. 250% seems like it will scale too well in later tiers, while the loss of benefit from temporary spirit buffs makes static spirit disproportionately powerful.

Originally Posted by Darkener

Holy Priests can also cast PWS, just on a 6 sec cooldown. So not sure why they don't get Rapture as well or why Disc needs that mana back so desperately but Holy doesn't need that mana back?

They will unlikely give holy rapture for multiple reasons. A holy priest is unlikely to cast much PW:S in a raid (other than for B&S) as it is pretty mana-costly and a low HpM spell (same for disc if not for rapture). Secondly, there is only that many PW:S that can go onto the raid, due to the weakened soul debuff, which is annoying if your raid runs with more than one disc priest.

While they have failed to execute this correctly on live, I believe that the designers intended for holy's mana regen model to be based on mana-reduction buffs, procs, passive "free" healing / chakra. And finally, I feel that PW:S is THE defining spell for disc priests, sorry but penance was just an afterthought. There are already so much qq that classes are homogenised, so I doubt that they will go down this route.

Rapture's original intention was mainly to reward players for utilising PW:S correctly, seeing that PW:S was a very mana costly spell to use back then (and still is). Over the years it has changed into a mana regen tool for disc, as a counterpart for holy's holy concentration which got removed to align it with other healers' passive mana regen.

I agree that PWS is a go to spell for Disc, but when MSV was released I relied heavily on PWS as a Holy Priest tank healing in our 10 man raid to get through Stone Guard. I even had to rely on SoR for our first kill. I suppose you could say that SoR is Holy's defining regen mechanic, what a sad way to get mana back.

For holy I would like to see fourth chakra - no bonus to any heals, but all mana costs -30% or so... + Chakra switch CD down to 10 secs or even lower, down to only GCD. That would result in some interesting gameplay (ok, not too refined, just an idea I got while reading some of your thoughts).

But for rapture - HolyLathus, every 12 secs 26k mana? No one times their rapture to get every 12 secs, 15 more likely. And it is 26k mana -19 k mana to cast the shield... Without shaman in raid it is actually not so broken. Would hate to lose effect of my proc/use trinkets on the way to unbroke Rapture. In Czech republic we call it "throw the baby out with the bath water "...